Take advantage of expert knowledge.
So you’ve been wowed by the sales pitch, the demo showed everything working just the way you want it to and now you’re seriously considering handing some money over and getting the software to solve all your problems. But, as noted in Adam Welker’s blog, software alone does not solve problems. However well-engineered and intuitive the software might be, you and your team are going to need to learn something about what it does and how it does it if you want to prove to your boss that you made the right decision and start delivering value to your organization as early as possible.
Three years ago, with 13 years of broad experience at 1E including consultancy, product design and testing, implementation, documentation, support and even sales under my belt, I took the opportunity to get involved in something special, something I am really passionate about – building and sharing knowledge. Throughout my 25-year career in IT, I’ve developed and delivered a few training courses (Windows 3.11, Excel 4.0, SMS 2.0, Wise Installer 3.0) as ‘side projects’ in whatever role I was doing at the time, but in 2012 I took on the challenge of building our first formal technical training and certification program at 1E to provide a structured learning path for our own technical staff, our partners and our customers.
1E has trained IT leaders from 20 countries.
The other day I was reviewing the progress of this program and I’m really proud of what my team has achieved so far. To date we’ve delivered training to over 800 people, but I was particularly excited by the geographical spread of our learners, who are based in over 20 countries.
For anyone involved in teaching, one of the most rewarding aspects is seeing your students develop and start sharing their knowledge with others, building a community of peers. When people outside your organization begin to share what they have learned with their peers, communities of knowledgeable people begin to grow and benefit users everywhere. Like when Dave Kawula and Emile Cabot recently published their book Advanced Windows Deployments Using 1E Software (available on amazon.com), or when Johnny Radeck shared his experience running a Nomad PoC on the CoreTech blog.
So before you get too far into the procurement process in your next software purchase, as well as investigating the learning and support that the vendor provides, check out what the independent global community looks like. If you’re considering adopting a 1E solution in your own organization, attending a training course is a great way to get an alternative perspective on the technology and how it is used in the real world, along with the opportunity to spend a couple of days in the company of other people facing similar challenges as you and an instructor with in-depth knowledge and real-world implementation experience.
You can get all the details of our training program at https://www.1e.com/about-us/services/training/ but if you have any specific questions please just drop an email to training@1e.com.
And finally, I’m now on a mission to spread the global reach of 1E skills even further, so anyone registering for training in any countries where we haven’t delivered training before will get their first training course free of charge!
